In July 2021 Google disabled FeedBurner's email notification feature. This was used by many blogs to let their users subscribe by email. It was especially common with Blogger users via the "FollowByEmail widget" which was backed by FeedBurner.
There are many alternatives for this widget with different feature sets. FeedMail is one option worth considering. In fact FeedBurner's shutdown was one of the motivating factors for the creation of FeedMail! Our founder wanted to provide email subscriptions to his blog, but all of the available options were expensive, difficult, had ads or were loaded with non-optional tracking links.
Pros
- Multiple cost options:
- Free for the publisher. Each user that subscribes using FeedMail gets 400 updates free. (Or 1000 if you use a referral code). This means that if you post weekly your users will be able to subscribe for more than 7 years at no cost.
- Paid by the publisher. Click here for information on how you can provide your users free subscription.
- Integration is easy, just link to your subscription page.
- Driven by your RSS feed just like FeedBurner. No backend changes required.
- Real-time if your feed supports WebSub. (Blogger does)
Cons
Since FeedMail is a privacy-focused and subscriber focused service there are a couple of features that you may miss from publisher-focused services.
- No visibility into subscriber information, including email addresses.
- No open and click tracking.
- Currently no subscriber-count information. (If you are interested in this get in touch, we are considering providing basic anonymized information.)
Setup
- Go to the New Subscription page on FeedMail.
- Enter your blog's URL and click "Go"
- Copy the URL. This is your subscription link.
You can share that link with your users however you want. For example add a "📨 Subscribe via Email" link to your blog template.
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